Nursing The Doctor (10 page)

“I’ll get you a drink.” Lily dumped the contents of the water glass and refilled it from the green pitcher on the night stand. She inserted a fresh straw and handed it to him. He drank deeply.

“Thanks.” The single, abrupt word was all he seemed inclined to say.

“We had a pretty quiet day downstairs,” Lily blurted out when the silence became intolerable. “A fourteen-year-old with an ectopic pregnancy, a baby with a button up his nose, an acute asthma attack, a kid who fell fourteen feet out of a tree and only broke his thumb...”

“Spare me the details, okay, Lil?” His tone was sarcastic. “I don’t give a damn whether you had an alien with four arms and six legs. Tough as it is to believe, at the moment I have other things on my mind besides the ER.”

Lily swallowed hard. He was about as rude and obnoxious as it was possible to get, and all of a sudden her temper flared. She kept her voice low so that the other people in the room wouldn’t hear, but she knew her anger was evident in her tone.

“Look, Greg, I know you’re hurting, and I’m sorry, but there’s no need to take it out on everyone who’s trying to help you.”

He gave her a long, measuring look and then sighed.

“Lily, I appreciate your kindness, coming up here to see me, but the fact is, I...don’t...want...company.” His voice was hard as flint “I want to be left alone. Doesn’t anybody get it? So it would be best all round if you left. And don’t bother coming again. I’m not much good at idle conversation right now.”

“You just want to lie here and feel sorry for yourself, is that it?” Lily felt her control slipping and her voice rising.

“You’re antagonizing all the nursing staff, making enemies of everyone who wants nothing more than to see you make a full recovery. Sure you’re not used to being helpless and flat on your back, everybody understands that and we all know it’s not easy. But you don’t have to be so grumpy, Greg. Your attitude stinks from what I’m hearing.”

“The hospital grapevine always did work overtime,” he said with a sneer. “What’d the staff do, have a little meeting over the way Brulotte’s acting and send you up to chastise me?”

The last of Lily’s patience fled. “You’ve got an exaggerated idea of your own importance, Doctor, if you think all the staff have to do is sit around and discuss you. There are other patients in this place, in case you haven’t noticed.”

This time the silence was charged, and the other visitors in the room were suddenly quiet. Lily knew they’d heard her tirade. She turned to leave.

“Sorry.” The apology was gruff, but his tone of voice at least indicated regret. When she turned and looked at him, he met her gaze. There was chagrin and mute appeal in his eyes. “I’m just not good at this, Lil.” The confession was reluctant.

“I doubt that anyone is.” Her voice was still tart. “It’s not exactly a situation any of us plan for.”

“I know it’s the biggest cliche in the place—I must have heard patients say it a million times—but I never dreamed this could happen to me.” A sound intended as a laugh touched her heart because it was so filled with pain.

“Time takes on a whole new meaning while you’re just lying here. I know it won’t be like this forever, but it sure feels that way at the moment. If this damned wound on my leg would just heal enough for them to cast it, I’d at least get as far as rehab.” He paused and then added in a rush, “And now they figure maybe there’s some paraparesis as well. I can’t always feel my toes.”

Compassion filled her. Platitudes were useless. He knew as well as she the ominous effects that such partial paralysis might have.

“Greg, that’s awful. But if they’re not sure, maybe it’s just swelling.”

“That’s what I keep telling myself.” Their eyes held for what seemed a long time before he turned his head away.

“I actually am better left alone, Lily. I appreciate your concern, but please don’t come again. I’m not fit for man nor beast, as my grandfather used to say.” His tone was once again distant, and this time she left without another word.

Outside the hospital in the parking lot, she tried to insert her key in the door lock of her car and realized she was trembling.

Damn the man. He had an uncanny ability to get under her skin. Well, she’d do what he wanted, that was certain. She’d have to be totally masochistic to visit him again. She had better things to do with her time.

Like worrying about the darned needle stick, for instance.

No doubt about it, she thought with a sardonic grin as she pulled the car into traffic, she led an incredibly dull life, work, home, her daily run, renting the odd video and going out for dinner now and then with Frannie was about the extent of it. And she’d been looking forward all week to baby-sitting Zoe on Thursday night when Kaleb and Frannie had their big date, so what did that tell you?

It wasn’t exactly the fast lane. No wonder she was obsessing about that damn needle stick.

“Dr. Brulotte?”

Greg turned his head and warily eyed the tall man standing beside his bed. He was fairly sure he’d never laid eyes on him before, but that was nothing new.

There’d been an absolute parade of people, some familiar, some strangers, to and from his bedside all morning. Two specialists that Bellamy had brought in for yet another consult, a technician needing to draw blood for the twentieth time. What the hell did they do down in the lab with all the blood they drew, drink it?

A dietitian had been in to talk about meals, a physiotherapist had breezed by to remind him to do deep breathing and coughing regardless of how agonizing it was, and the cleaning staff had come by and fussed around with his bedside table and jarred his bed back and forth until he’d given them a blistering tirade.

Half the population of the bloody city had observed, poked, prodded and annoyed him, and it wasn’t even noon yet.

“Dr. Brulotte, my name is Wade Keenan.” The guy was tall, with broad shoulders and the toned look of an athlete, although he walked with a cane and a distinct limp. Greg waited impatiently to hear what his excuse was for being there.

“I’m a counselor for patients with spinal injuries. John Bellamy asked me to drop by and see you.”

“Bellamy’s got one hell of a nerve,” Greg growled through gritted teeth. “He’s also got the wrong diagnosis, but that’s nothing unusual around here. Two so-called experts think all I’ve got is some bruising and a bit of swelling. Only one hotshot thinks I have a spinal injury.”

“Yeah, John told me that. The reason he sent me was because he figures you’re reacting to your accident much the way I did to mine, and he thought maybe if I told you what happened to me, it would make it easier for you in here.”

“Yeah? Well, I doubt that. I’m not really into group therapy. What would make it easier on me would be if I could get a couple of hours of peace and quiet. And a private room. That would help one hell of a lot.”

Greg ignored the fact that the old man in the other bed was listening. Well, the guy had to be stone deaf anyway not to know how Greg felt about sharing this room. He’d given both Ben and his doctor an ultimatum that morning. He didn’t give a damn what it took, he wanted a private before the day was out.

“I know what you mean,” Wade agreed cheerfully. “The place is a zoo. When I was in I had them put a sign on my door saying absolutely no visitors.”

“I intend to do the same.” Keenan didn’t take the hint, so Greg added pointedly, “I’d like to try to sleep now.”

Wade grinned. “Sure. I’ll drop by another time. I’m here a lot, which is weird. See, I swore once I got out of here, I’d never set foot in the damned place again.”

Greg didn’t answer. He had no intentions of encouraging this self-styled knight to try to be his buddy.

“See you again soon, Doctor.”

Greg fervently hoped not, but as Wade limped away, Greg wondered for a moment what particular calamity had befallen him, not that he was curious enough to ask.

He closed his eyes and wondered how long it would be before his next meds came.

Tuesday and Wednesday, Lily checked the computer at work, looking for the results of Nefstead’s blood tests.

On Thursday morning, her last shift in that set, she flipped the computer screen down and there they were.

“Nefstead, Victor M.” Her eyes roved quickly over the series of numerical findings down to the notation at the bottom.

“Hepatitis C, positive.”

She stared at the notation, reading it again, and then once again.

“Hepatitis C, positive.”

Hepatitis C, the trained medical part of her brain recounted with textbook accuracy. A viral infection of the liver that can cause severe liver dysfunction and is potentially fatal. Transmitted predominately through direct contact with the blood of an infected person.

Direct contact, as in a transfusion, or a needle stick.

Her throat closed and she gulped. All of a sudden she felt icy cold and nauseated. Her heart began to pound, and for a long moment the world spun around her in crazy circles, and she thought that for the first time in her life she was about to faint.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Hey, Lily, you okay? You’re as white as a sheet. You’re not getting that flu that’s going around, are you?”

Lily looked up at the concerned face of the clerk and realized he must have been standing beside her for several minutes.

“If you’re all done here...”

She was belatedly aware that she was using his computer terminal. She got to her feet and then had to grab for the edge of the desk to maintain her balance as dizziness once again overcame her.

He reached out to steady her, frowning at her with a concerned expression on his jovial face. “Maybe you oughta lie down for a while. You really don’t look so hot.”

Somehow she summoned a smile. “I’m okay, Jimmy, honest. It’s just that I...I didn’t have any breakfast. That always makes me dizzy,” she lied.

Portly and fond of his meals, Jimmy was instantly sympathetic. “Oh, yeah, that’ll do it all right. Better scarf down something now, while it’s quiet.”

“I will, Jimmy. Thanks.”

Horrified and sick with fear and foreboding, Lily frantically tried to remember everything she’d ever heard about Hep C, and what immediately came to mind was anything but reassuring.

There’d been a recent highly publicized case involving a surgeon who nicked himself with a scalpel while operating on a patient with Hep C. The surgeon was dead within four days.

You know a reaction that violent is rare, the rational part of her brain told her. There’s always the possibility that the infection won’t be chronic or that you won’t develop it at all. You need to read up on it before you draw any conclusions.

But she already knew all too well that most people who developed Hep C had it for the rest of their lives, that it could and often did lead to scarring of the liver, liver cancer and death. What else did she really need to know?

Still, during her break she hurried to the library and with trembling fingers checked the computer for information. There were numerous pamphlets as well as the more detailed material in medical journals, and she skimmed through as much of it as she could in the limited amount of time she had. The facts made her nauseous.

“People with the disease often experience no symptoms and feel quite healthy, but it’s always there, lurking in the bloodstream,” one book warned dourly.

Another stated, “There is only one recognized treatment for the disease, injections of alpha interferon. They can’t be instigated until the disease becomes chronic, because the treatment is not always successful and is sometimes associated with severe side effects.”

That almost made her laugh. The treatment was successful in that it eradicated the disease but killed the patient. She felt as if she was caught in a nightmare, but there was one thing she had to do immediately.

She found a telephone that was reasonably private and, stomach roiling, called the blood bank. She identified herself and then, in a halting voice, said, “I, I, um, recently donated blood, and I totally forgot about a needle stick I’d gotten at work. I’ve just learned that the patient I was treating has tested positive for Hepatitis C, and I’m concerned that whoever gets my blood could be infected.”

The technician who answered the call was young and inexperienced. She eventually put Lily through to her supervisor, and Lily repeated the agonizing facts.